Tag Archives: tiger claw

The GeneralsJoes July review-a-thon continues today with the third vehicle in the nearly unreleased G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra Alpha Wave 3 vehicles. Check out the review page to see my thoughts on the Tiger Claw w/ Leatherneck!

With a huge thanks to friend of GeneralsJoes and member of JoeCanuck.com Stealth Viper for reporting that the third wave of Alpha vehicles from the G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra have started hitting retail at various Wal-Marts in Canada!

The sighting was first reported here by akpayne, and several other JoeCanuck members have chimed in, including images!

This is finally confirmation that these have hit mainstream retail somewhere, and will fill some holes in many Joe fans’ collections! Check out the sighting thread here, and if you’re in Canada, or know someone who lives there, start cashing in those favors.

The third wave of Rise of Cobra Alpha Vehicles created quite the firestorm when it was leaked that the assortment was potentially cancelled. In fact, I’d argue word of their cancellation generated much more buzz than the actual figures and vehicles themselves ever did.

Well, after all of the hulabaloo (yes, I just used the word hulabaloo…) it now appears that the assortment will see release after all, just after a short delay. In fact, word is the Philippines have already seen the vehicle packs appear on store shelves. As further proof of this, JoeCustoms member chrysophylax has posted some very nice images along with some reviews over at JoeCustoms.com. Reviews are up for the Tiger Claw w/ Leatherneck, the Polar Shark Sub w/ Ice Storm, and the Lavapod driver, Volcano Viper. I’ve also mirrored the great images below.

The more I see the Volcano Viper the cooler he becomes…I really love the detail on that helmet. Holy crap that’s coolness. The Polar Shark Sub is pretty awesome, too. Definitely the strongest Alpha wave yet, glad it’s being released.

In a pretty surprising story that has flown amazingly under the radar, the third wave of Alpha vehicles that was initially rumored to be cancelled has arrived at retail in the Philippines according to Terror Drome member FeuerFrei.

Does this mean they are soon to arrive stateside as well? The latest Hasbro Q & A reported that these vehicles were just delayed, and not in fact cancelled, but if they hit shortly, that would be a lot earlier than everyone thought.

Over at Hisstank.com familiar pre-production fan Rulz has come up with the entire third wave of upcoming Alpha vehicles, and has kindly posted a number of images of said vehicles. The assortment includes the Polar Sharc Sub w/ Ice Storm, the Cobra Lava Pod w/ Volcano Viper, and the Tiger Claw ATV w/ Leatherneck. Personally, for as much as I love the Rise of COBRA, I do feel like the vehicles have been somewhat lacking, especially the Alpha class stuff. While the Snarler and the Skysweeper were both pretty cool, I’m not wild about the Rockslide, the Molepod, or the Cobra Snake Trax. Now, only in the third wave, we’ve got another Molepod, and another ATV Ferret repaint, with a Rockslide repaint coming with Dusty in Wave 4. It’s getting a bit silly. Dealing with repaints and mixed tools in the figure line is one thing, but paying $18 for repaint vehicles 2 months after they were released the first time is really pushing it.

But as mixed as I am on the vehicles, the figures are actually looking pretty damn good. I love the Rollbar and Air Raid from the Snarler and Sky Sweeper. Ice Storm and Volcano Viper both really kick ass, too. I even think the upcoming Dusty looks spectacular.

But this post is about Wave 3 isn’t it?

The Polar Sharc Sub actually looks really neat, so I think that one is a home run all around. Ice Storm is an awesome looking new figure and new character to boot. The Volcano Viper has some serious potential, but I really didn’t dig the Molepod the first time around, I especially don’t dig the Lavapod repaint. I will say the Tiger Claw looks a lot cooler than the Snake Trax, though…but Leatherneck doesn’t offer a whole lot of new stuff to love, even in the jungle camo. Maybe I’ll let the images speak for themselves.

Awash with repaints and retools, the next wave of Alpha Vehicles consists of a mostly blech repaint of a mostly blech vehicle, the Lava Pod, however, the Volcano-Viper looks all sorts of kick ass. Pretty funny how he uses the same tooling as the arctic Ice-Viper, yet the ultra-hot weather specialist still looks right at home. A bad ass head sculpt and mask don’t hurt.

The Rockslide is no great shakes either, but the digicam Dusty looks pretty nasty as a great modern update for the familiar old favorite. Hopefully the final version comes with his head scarf, I can’t recall if we saw it during the various convention photo shoots. My least favorite of this underwhelming trio is the TigerClaw, a haphazard repaint and retool of the already haphazard Snake Trax w/ Scrap Iron. But what really bums me out here is the vehicle driver. If they’re going to give us a Leatherneck in green camouflage, couldn’t they at least have made it a pure homage to the ’86 version, rather than this strange dark forest camo? At least that way they’d make the old school folks happy…instead, we get a bizarrly kitbashed version that is unchanged from the original other than a different camouflage scheme that still doesn’t look like the right camouflage scheme. The figure isn’t really a bad one, I guess…he does have some neat military elements, but I can hear those complaints coming a mile away.